Aux armes, [virtual] citoyens!

You know – you know – how skeptical I am about Second Life, and all such virtual environments. And while to all my usual reservations I must in this case add further questions as to the wisdom of discourse via Gatling gun, there’s something undeniably stirring about this. In both senses. Tip of the cockaded tricorne to M. Nova.

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3 responses to “Aux armes, [virtual] citoyens!”

Wow, the incoherence of the protest is amazing, “I don’t care. FN equals violence.” But some of the bizarre imagery of the battle is impressive. Still, this seems more like other dressing-up games people act out in virtual environments than anything like real political feeling. Almost certainly many of the protesters were there mostly for the fun of chucking purple exploding pig bombs at something.

Stipulated – but as a veteran of many, many, all-too-many actual protests, I can tell you that the exact same dynamic obtains IRL.

You get the same mix of the well-intentioned; doctrinaire single-issue robots tone-deaf to the inappropriateness of their own slogans, posters, etc., to the issue at hand; and those who have absolutely no idea what they’re protesting, and are just there for the adrenaline, the righteousness and the teargas. In a way, seeing the protesters here commenting just as inarticulately as their counterparts in IRL strikes me as an indicator of a kind of perverse success.

I’m also thrilled to see the outbreak of explicit politics in a virtual environment. (I’m glad to see the King-sun, for example, as a hard-to-miss reminder that whatever you think of MLK, this entire environment is owned by someone, and reflects that someone’s values right down to the rules of nature.)